(Phaysis)

So here I am. Whatever. Nothing ecstatically, fantastically great to report. Whatever. I hate technology. My Time-Warner cable modem connection has been sucking shit for the past three weeks. You expect me to feel gung-ho about life when I can’t reliably tell anyone? Time-Warner states that there indeed is a problem in the neighborhood. No shit. It’s not like it’s rocket surgery. Fix the fucking thing, or I cancel service. Then again, going to another company wouldn’t work — they all use the same fucking equipment. Whatever.

Last week, during the morning of a major downpour, there was water pooling and flowing across the road in the construction zone outside of my apartment. It’s a stretch of road I have to drive every day to get to work. Around 3pm, I stick my head out the back door of my job to check on the weather. It was then that I noticed that I was the proud recipient of a flat tire. Fuck. Three-inch long piece of stamped steel, looked like a hinge or a latch, buried in my left-rear tire. It must have washed into the roadway from the construction debris. So, I finished up a job, excused myself, clocked out, put on the donut tire, and limped to the nearest tire shop. One hour and $100 later I have two new tires to replace the flat and the other rear tire which has been patched a year ago. So, with all that, I was officially, undeniably poor. I still am until this friday, a long-overdue payday.

Things suck.

If you know me (which you should, since you’re visiting my site), and you see me in my recent daily life, you’ve probably noticed (if you cared enough) that I’ve been getting really short-tempered lately. I’m growing impatient with a lot of things. My tolerance of bullshit is growing really thin.

Case in point — the bosslady is growing on my ever-fucking nerves. I really don’t know what the hell is up with women who grew up as the girls who made THE RULES of the playground. They made all the rules, they made all the games, and if you weren’t playing according to the rules, spoken AND unspoken, then you were the target of their anger. So the bosslady, a.k.a. the woman married to the boss, has joined our team in an effort to police her husband make things more efficient and to help “set up ‘systems’” (that’s a term straight from corporate hell). Whatever. If she doesn’t stop pandering and condescending to us, I’m afraid she’s not going to have a workforce left to help pay for her future retirement. We’re adults. We’re not her daughters. Stop that shit.

So, yeah, I’m hating my job. Too much bullshit. Leave us alone and let us do our jobs. That’s all we ask.

But you can’t tell her that.

I was going to go to Texarkana last weekend to see my mother for her birthday weekend, but I don’t feel comfortable at all with driving that distance with my timing belt getting as old as it is. It’s about 50-thousand miles overdue, and I don’t like that. How much will it cost me to have it replaced? Hold onto your lunches, because I lost mine: no less than $450. What the fuck for? God. Something replaceable like that, there’s a system for doing it if the mechanic’s experienced. No sense in that shit. $80 for a new belt and water pump, so what’s the rest of the cost? Four hours of labor. Fuck that shit. Bullshit.

Nothing good to brag about. Sorry. Tune in later.

I had a good ol’ long session up at Mojo’s today. Spent about 12 hours up there, just a programmin’, lookin’ at the photos I got developed, an’ chattin’ with any of my friends who was just passin’ through. Was a good time. An’ today I actually made a chunk a’ headway in my programmin’ duties.

But anyways, several hours after most a’ my people done left, this woman comes up to me (I got my laptop, see) and she asks me if I got any geeky skills, for you see she’s got some problems with her laptop. I says “Sure” an’ she sits down with me an’ I help her out. Hell, didn’t have much better ta do but play good Samar’tin. Well, after tryin’ ta fix her “com port” thang, which didn’t work out, I move on ta fixin’ her wireless connection. I get that fixed, and she was so ‘preciative. We sat an’ shot the shit fer a while, I intra’duced myself, an’ she was so thankful she asked if I wanted ta go fer a ride, y’know, ta take care a’ me. She was gonna smoke me out! Heh!

Now, don’t get me wrong here, I get stoned maybe once a year er so, but I figgered ta-night jus’ wadn’t the night, so I turned her down. She was cool with that. I was cool with that.

So we kept on chattin’ an’ whatnot, playin’ with her dawg (a well-b’haved nine-year-ol’ rottweiler, I might add), pokin’ ’round on her laptop and such, and then this gal asks me if’n I got a girl! Heh! I says “no, I don’t really,” then I point ta my laptop an’ say, “An’ this is prolly why.” She got a good laugh off’a that. An’ then, a few minutes later, she asks me if’n I’d like for us ta get to know each other better, y’know, non-computer stuff. She pro-po-zishins me! HEH!

Well I tell you what, it ain’t often I get hit on by a 41-year-old woman. Now, don’t get me wrong, she was good lookin’ for a woman her age – thin build, long curly hair, had kinda a Janis Joplin / Hippy thang goin’, but I jus’ wadn’t in the mood I guess, bein’ all shy and such (I figger I’m kinda “passive-agressive” with girls), so I turned her down again. And she was cool with that, and I was cool with that.

She asked me if I hung out there often, an’ I told her “Just about every day” an’ she laughed. Sumphin tells me perhaps that I’ll be seein’ her again. Y’know, I hate ta be the “woman” in this sitiation, playin’ coy like that, but if she comes back ’round, I think I might jus’ take ‘er up on her offers.

An’ lemme tellya, it’s women like that who keep this town cool. Gawdamn do I love this place. God bless Austin.

Y’all stay tuned now, y’hear?

Man, today has been a rollercoaster, and I haven’t even been awake for two hours yet.

Ok. First things first: I wake up just before noon, a few minutes before my alarm was set to go off. Have to pee real bad, and I had to do it in record time, before my alarm went off (didn’t feel like jarring myself with its noise). Happily, that whole thing went off without a hitch.

So. Bladder emptied, alarm disabled, I go to my computer to wake it up. Waitaminute, it’s not on. Did I turn my monitor off? Can’t remember. Not unless I did it in my sleep. I sleepwalk? Wait a minute: I can’t hear the CPU fan. Aw, shit. It’s shut off. We had a power outage. We had a power outage? Damn. Battery backup hasn’t turned back on. Ok. I reach down and toggle the backup’s switch, my system turns on. Feh. Have to tweak with some BIOS issues, then I continue booting. Mmm. Norton Disk Doctor, yes I want to fix errors, no I don’t want to make an undo disk. Feh. Ok. Finally, I can log into windows. What? I can’t get online? Christ, this is gonna be a long ride.

I go to the kitchen to grab a coke, notice the coffee machine’s clock was flashing. Ok, yes we *did* have an outage. Ok. I turn on the linux server’s monitor and log in as root. What? There’s no trace of the power outage in the system logs? Huh?! That server’s UPS lasts for, like, half an hour. The server would’ve noticed a power outage. Not a trace. I am confused.

I check the internet connection. Appears fine from the server. Hmm. Go back to my room for a smoke, check again, nothing. Ok, something is definitely gone south. Back at the server, I check the firewall settings. Hmm. The firewall kernel module isn’t even loaded. I load it, tweak a few things, still nothing. I do a shutdown and reboot. On the reboot, the server’s init notices the drives weren’t unmounted properly and does a scan on the drives. Reboot continues as normal. Log back in, check the connection. Still fine from there, but the firewall module still wasn’t loaded. Good gawd. I load it again, and this time I run the firewall config tool. Ok, good. It’s loaded and working. Back to my bedroom computer — what do we have? We’re ONLINE!

I am much relieved.

So, a few smokes and a sandwich later, I check my bank account. What? There’s more money in there that I didn’t put in there! Could it be? Well, paint me green and call me money, the Feds decided to let me have my tax return! Hell yeah! I immediately place a large portion of it in my poor little flagging savings account and badda-bing, I’m a happier man.

You know, I’m a simple man with simple pleasures and simple needs. All I need is sleep, elimination, nicotine, caffeine, nutrition, an internet connection, and surprise money. And I got all of those needs in the first hour of my day! Fuck yeah!

Ah, today’s gonna be a gooood day. I got Eeyore’s Birthday to attend. Let’s see if I can get some of my other needs taken care of: booze, fun, community, companionship, and luuuuv sweeeet luuuuv, baby.

Pop a top and raise a can; this might be Shawn’s luckiest day.